Social Buckets and Funnels
The “sales funnel” has been an important marketing concept. Together with market segmentation, it’s part of the common marketing diet. Interactive media give us pause about how valid these two classic concepts are. Is reaching customers still as simple as dividing the audience into appropriate segments, then sifting through the buckets over time to see who is willing to buy what?
There are, at least, new complications because of the new feedback loop of interactivity. Suspects, prospects and customers can talk back both to you and to others. So their interests and sales “responsiveness” are shaped by many more voices than before. The main effect is that the market buckets and funnels become leaky. A “qualified” prospect can become “unqualified” (and vice versa) because of a few “posts,” “comments” or even “tweets.” And changes like this reinforce each other because of the interactive feedback loop.
A Basic Feedback Loop
The upshot is that the entire buy/sell system becomes more volatile. A small whisper, if it triggers the right feedback loops, can have big consequences. What’s more, this sort of thing can happen almost silently. This is because the number of voices is becoming so large that opinion feedback clusters can incubate without being noticed until they reach an audible threshold. A small-world network together with this kind of circular interaction can throw the usual segmentation and funnel calculations into disarray.
So what does this mean in practice? It means expecting and insisting on “planned outcomes” is becoming outdated. Instead we need dynamic arrangements that can react quickly in a volatile environment. The right kinds of reactions can dampen and steer the system. As usual, this is easier said than done.
